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Obama foreign aid panel: 2 1/2 years and still waiting

After two-and-a-half years on the runway, President Barack Obama's Global Development Council was finally poised for take-off this week—but, no.

The council was slated to meet Friday at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in the White House complex. But the session was postponed at the last minute. A POLITICO reporter who had asked to attend the public meeting got an email Thursday morning saying the session was off. Members of the panel were apparently told earlier in the week.

Then came the wait for nominees to actually serve on the council. Those emerged last December, with bond investing guru and regular CNBC guest, Mohamed El-Erian of PIMCO taking the chairman's job. Obama named eight others to the panel, though in the meantime Sylvia Burwell Mathews was named to head the Office of Management and Budget, so she's probably out.

It's unclear why Friday's inaugural session was canceled. It's possible President Barack Obama was to attend and his schedule had to be rejiggered several times this week to address urgent matters like the controversies surrounding the Internal Revenue Service and sexual assault problems in the military. The president spent much of Friday in Baltimore at jobs-related events.

Asked about the delay, a White House official who asked not to be named said: "For scheduling reasons, we had to postpone the first meeting of the President’s Global Development Council from our original tentative date of May 17. I expect that we will have a new date soon and will issue an updated notice to the public. In the meantime, since late February, the GDC has been meeting informally and holding frequent conference calls. We look forward to scheduling the first official meeting in the near future."

"They had some listening conference calls in March where people offered ideas for what the council should work on," a person familiar with the council told POLITICO.

The White House did not respond to queries about whether the president had planned to attend or why the council has taken more than 31 months to get up and running.

The September 2010 White House announcement was vague on what the council's role would be, saying simply that it would be "comprised of leading members of the philanthropic sector, private sector, academia, and civil society, to provide high-level input relevant to the work of United States Government agencies."

Friday's planned session of the Global Development Council was announced to the public in the Federal Register last week, though without a specific time and without the usual 15-day notice. No other meetings of the council have been announced.